Thanks for your message! I will definitely have fun. There's great content on the website and the contribution of other forum members is amazing. Just started but already learned a lot of new things about Switzerland.

In my secondary school, I selected Latin ( for grammar concepts) and German ( because of the family origins). Later, as I was learning to be a chemist, i studied languages of value to a modern chemist in those days - German, and Russian. French never got up in the priorities.

French has gone the way of Italian as a language of diplomacy, having been displaced by English in that role and many others.

I also selected Latin (at the urging of my parents) and I am glad that I did, as it provides a wonderful grounding when learning the Romance languages. When I got to university I found that Spanish was pretty easy to pick up with my French and Latin. I also took some Italian, and of course it is even closer to Latin than is Spanish. Spanish is somewhat more remote from Latin as it has a good number of words which find their origin in the Arabic of the occupying Moors. As for Portuguese, I can read it but that is about it, as it sounds much different than Spanish. My German is not anywhere as good as yours, as I only studied it for one semester. I often say that I understand "train station German" which is pretty handy when travelling in the German parts of Switzerland and in Germany and Austria.

Vous avez raison que le français est beaucoup moins important qu'auparavant. Mais, je dois vous dire qu'il est toujours une langue très, très belle. Do you know the singer Yves Duteil ? Here is a song that he did: youtu.be/joUeMoDDcYM One of my favourite lines is "Où la saveur des choses est déjà dans les mots" which translates as "where the taste of things is already in the words", and even here, it sounds better in French !

Too bad you were not able to understand Marie-Thérèse. I had thought of her because of your occasional references to the Röstigraben.